


Crossing Burnt Bridges

by skulls_and_stripes



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abusive Jasper/Lapis Lazuli (Steven Universe), Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Pearl/Rose Quartz (Steven Universe)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-16 08:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21267716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skulls_and_stripes/pseuds/skulls_and_stripes
Summary: Your name is Pearl Waters and you literally can't swim to save your life.People assume it's a result of recent trauma, but it's been this way as long as you can remember, though the recent events with your sister certainly didn't help.There are a lot of things you can't do to save your life - like maintaining a healthy relationship and being someone's roommate without getting kicked out.Maybe the third time will prove lucky.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> woohoo, it's my NaNoWriMo project! though this is the first time i've ever done nanowrimo so like ... i sincerely doubt ill get 50k words. the longest fic ive ever written was 44k and that was a clear outlier because it was an AU based on the show's canon and the majority of the writing was just copy/pasting transcripts and converting it to narrative style.
> 
> but im gonna try my best and have fun!

There’s still the lingering voice in the back of your head, telling you that she wants nothing to do with you.

You can’t blame it. You know that you’re supposed to shut down negative thoughts, but you can’t deny that the lingering voice has an excellent point. You can’t be surprised if she wants nothing to do with you, and you can’t fault her if that’s how she feels. You’d want nothing to do with her, if the roles were reversed.

That’s a lie and you know it. Your roles can’t be reversed because they’d be essentially the same. They’re palindromic. Symmetrical.

You still feel like she wants nothing to do with you.

Why would she? It’s not like you really know each other. You’ve only spoken to her three times before -- twice, once each at two separate funerals, and once at a police interview. You feel like that should be reason enough to avoid her.

But she responded to your Facebook post. She had probably heard what happened, from everyone’s perspectives but yours, more than enough opportunity to decide you were toxic. And yet she chose to respond. To invite you.

She must have felt sympathy for your plight, somehow. Recognized that what you’re going through is almost the same.

You don’t know why she wants anything to do with you. A part of you thinks she’s a complete idiot for thinking any good could come of this. But you need a place to stay, your ex justifiably never wants to see you again, and you can’t realistically stray too far from Beach City -- you do have a job, after all.

You just wish you could get away from all the mourning.

You hesitate, holding a framed picture of a pink-haired woman. Should you take it with you?

You suddenly realise that your roles are anything but symmetrical. It was ridiculous of you to assume you know what she’s going through.

She was her daughter. You were her secretary.

She was her sister. You were her toxic ex.

She was her sister. You were her future sister-in-law, assuming the two would ever marry. Which is a rather big assumption.

She was closer with them, with all of them.

With both of them, technically. But she does not know that.

You shove the photo into your bag, planning to hide it once you reach your destination.

The house you’re in is quiet right now. It has been ever since you were found out. Your ex, generously, has decided she’s not going to kick you out as long as it’s clear you’re making a genuine effort to find somewhere else. But she’s justifiably been giving you the cold shoulder, and your communication has been limited to the transfer of practical information.

It’s been quiet like this for almost two weeks now. You’ve spoken to her four times since -- once when you asked her to pass the salt, before you realised the atmosphere at dinner was too intolerable and resorted to eating in your bedroom, once to inform her that you’d posted on Facebook asking if anyone was searching for a roommate, once when you announced that a mutual friend of you both had responded to your post and you were planning to move in with her, and a fourth time this morning, asking her if she really cares if you take all your stuff with you, since you’re planning on walking and it would be impractical to carry.

“If it’s still here two days after you leave I’m claiming it,” she answered coldly. “Or donating it to charity.”

You supposed that meant you could leave some things. Checking with your future roommate revealed that she’s able to gift you some of the belongings that her previous roommate left behind -- sheets, bedspread, pillows, furniture, anything to make it a bedroom instead of just an empty room.

On one hand, her previous roommate was almost definitely one of her dead sisters, possibly both of them at different points, and that makes the whole thing more than a little creepy and sad.

On the other hand, it’s summer and you’re not carrying a quilt cover across Beach City on foot, even if it is a nice shade of turquoise.

You take a final glance around your room. You’ve torn the place apart and stayed longer than you should have in your quest to find every last thing you want to take, fully aware that anything you leave behind will officially be gone forever. Not only gone, but re-purposed. You can’t deny that, whether you’ve ever actually worn it or not, it would be a little disorienting to see your ex wearing your shirt.

Still, you have a limited amount of stuff to carry -- you’ve tried to limit it to one backpack and one suitcase, both overfull to an extreme. You’re leaving anything that can’t fit in your bags behind, because you’re in no mood to drag a mattress across the sand in summer. Besides, if it ends up donated to charity, you can’t say it’ll be a loss.

Some of the jewelry is taken with you -- a few pink gems, a teardrop-shaped blue gem on a necklace, an ugly green and white thing, and several pearls that were gifted to you as overused inside jokes based on your name -- but all of the orangeish-yellow gems are pointedly left behind, on the desk where it’s impossible to miss them when your room is inevitably cleaned out for anything that can be re-used.

She paid for them, after all. It’s only fair that she gets them back.

Satisfied that you’ve brought everything important with you, and secure in the knowledge that you have two days to notice and retrieve anything you’ve forgotten, you look in the mirror. You give your ginger hair another brush, though it’s still just as neatly curled as it was when you last brushed it, ten minutes ago.

This is your fourth meeting, so it’s a bit late to make your first impression. But considering that all of your previous meetings have been directly related to her sisters dying, you have a nagging feeling that she wasn’t too concerned with your appearance then.

She has every reason to hate you now, though, so you have to look your best to have a hope of winning her approval. You’re wearing a cyan dress with a yellow star on it, and blue ballet flats with pink socks. She probably won’t be able to see the yellow bike shorts under you dress -- you’ve never really been comfortable with skirts.

Finally satisfied, and eager to get out of the quiet and unbearable atmosphere of this house, you put your turquoise backpack on and pick up your suitcase. You walk downstairs. You don’t look anywhere near your ex’s face as you say, “I’m leaving. Thanks for letting me stay so long. Bye.”

She, likewise, avoids looking at you. “You’ve got two days to come back if you forgot anything. Bye.”

Your last interaction is somewhat friendly. In any other circumstances, it would make you reconsider, make you suddenly feel desperate to beg her to take you back. Now, it just makes you more desperate to escape.

You unlock your front door for the last time, and mutter vaguely, “Here’s my key,” as you place your key on the table. You walk outside and shut the door behind you.

The walk is more difficult than it should be -- it’s the hottest part of the day, it’s June, you’re carrying most of your belongings with you. You find yourself staring at the ocean as you walk.

It’s a little ironic. Your name is Pearl Waters, and you can’t swim to save your life. Literally.

Still, nobody can blame you for your aversion to water, with what’s happened recently. Nobody has to know that you’ve been an incompetent swimmer since you were seven and your parents signed you and your sister up for swimming lessons together.

She learned faster than average and went on to be the best swimmer in the year. You almost drowned and went on to have a phobia of water that would last your whole life.

Your sister would probably be even more afraid of water than you are, what with everything that’s happened recently.

But you can’t afford to think about that, not when you’re seeing your roommate. Her house -- your house -- is fast approaching. You pull your phone out of your pocket, and struggle to turn the brightness up to a usable level -- it’s normally at the lowest setting to prevent people from looking at it, but that does prove rather problematic in bright, sunny environments like this.

You check the address against the one she texted you, and you check the pictures against the house itself. It’s definitely the same place. Hesitantly, you go to your contacts and call her.

“Uh, who is this?” is her immediate response.

You gulp. “It’s Pearl.”

“Oh!” Your heart slows back to a healthy pace at her recognition. “Sorry, I forgot to save you in my phone. Uh, you still moving in today, or … ?”

“...I’m outside.”

“...Like, right outside?”

“...Yeah.”

“Cool, I’ll let you in. Gimme a sec.”

She hangs up and a second later the door opens. She’s still just as short as she was the last time you saw her. She’s wearing an oversized grey tank top. Her unruly, knee-length hair is dyed purple, and so is a good chunk of her face, particularly around the ears. You’re not surprised. You’ve never dyed your own hair, but you know that it stains skin just as badly as it does hair -- you know from the days you spent desperately scrubbing pink off of your hands in the shower like you committed a murder.

“Hi, Pearl.”

“Hello, Amethyst.

There’s a long, pregnant pause.

She’s first to bring it up.

“I’m really sorry about … you know. Greg. Our sisters.”

“I’m sorry as well,” you say. You force a smile. “But now’s not the time to focus on that.”

“Oh yeah, I’ll show you in.” You walk into the house, and she shuts the door behind you. She locks it, and then hands you the key. “Here’s your key. Do you want me to show you the whole house, or just your bedroom?”

“...Just my bedroom, for now. I need to put my belongings away.”

“Cool.”

She starts walking, and you start following, ignoring the fact that every inch of your brain is screaming at you to clean up. There’s rubbish on the floor, there’s dirt on the walls, the dirty dishes are piling up beside the sink to the point where you half expect your footsteps will cause a plate to fall and shatter…

Your room is somewhat better. It’s not perfect, and it’s not as neat and organised as your rooms have been in every other house you’ve lived in, but it’s not a pig sty. You can clean it up in around twenty minutes, an hour if you factor in how long it’ll take to put your belongings away. You sit down on your new bed, and your stomach stops churning, and you begin to think that this wasn’t such a bad thing.

You then look up and the illusion is promptly shattered.

“There’s a bloodstain on the ceiling.” It’s not a question, nor is it an accusation; it’s just a simple, undebatable declaration of fact.

“Yeah,” offers Amethyst as an explanation. “My sisters were, well, you know they were wildcards.”

Right. So that confirms it then. This room belonged to one of her dead sisters, most likely both of them at different times.

You can’t help but think it’s kind of fucked up that rent prices are so high that this poor girl had to clean up the room her sister lived in, while still mourning her sister, and offer it out to other people in order to be able to pay for the house -- and then repeat the process with another sister in a few years.

Your heart speeds up. Her sisters lived in this room. There’s blood on the ceiling. Was that how they … ?

No, you quickly remind yourself. Neither of them died bloody deaths. Well, Rose did … but that was in hospital, not in a bedroom. There’s plenty of perfectly logical explanations for the blood being on the ceiling, albeit unlikely ones -- most likely someone had a nosebleed or some sort of minor cut and accidentally flicked some blood onto the ceiling in panic. Unlikely, but possible.

“Don’t worry,” says Amethyst, not as reassuringly as she’s trying to be. “Nobody got hurt, it’s just menstrual blood.”

That, honestly, raises more questions than it answers.

“So, uh, I’ll leave you alone now. To put your stuff away.”

She leaves the room and you put your backpack down on the bed. You unzip it and dig through the contents. Your clothes are folded neatly and placed into drawers. Your photo is hidden under your pillow. Your folder of sheet music is placed on the wooden desk, and your jewelry is neatly arranged next to it.

You thought you would spare yourself the pain by leaving the ones your ex gave you at home, but you see the pink gems and suddenly the room smells like her.

You see the blue gem and suddenly you’re drowning.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s three in the morning and you’re washing the dishes.

You couldn’t sleep and you have an afternoon shift tomorrow so you can afford to sleep in. Besides, you have a nagging feeling that Amethyst isn’t going to wash them until absolutely necessary.

You’ve already cleaned most of the rest of the house -- you’ve swept and mopped the floors, you’ve cleaned the walls, you’ve made some sort of progress toward cleaning the bloodstain out of your bedroom ceiling, and the dishes are almost done. You’ve been up since midnight.

It’s the middle of the night and you’ve been cleaning for the last three hours.

...What are you doing with your life?

Two decades ago, you would never be able to get away with being up at this hour. Your days were so full to the brim that you were lucky to get eight hours of sleep and any hour spent awake after nine PM was practically begging to be sleep-deprived. Your alarm went off at four in the morning. You were so sleep-deprived it’s a miracle you survived long enough to graduate high school, and you loved it.

Juggling your high school studies with your employment was never easy, but you loved it. You were fifteen when your friends managed to take advantage of their power to let you become an official assistant to one of the higher-ups of Diamond Corporation, and as difficult as it was to get up at four AM to meet up with them before school, it was worth it.

It was a little disheartening having to help your employer fake her death.

But that’s beside the point.

Twenty years ago, you would never be up at this hour. Ten years ago, you would be laughing ecstatically with your girlfriend right now. Five years ago, you would be groaning in bed and turning over to see whatever the hell your annoying sister is texting you about at this hour.

As you put away the last clean plate and wipe the bench down, it hits you that Amethyst is going to ask about this when she wakes up. You hope she won’t be upset. You cleaned up, but you didn’t actually move anything that belonged to her, unless rubbish counts. The house is still disorganised, but you respect Amethyst’s privacy too much to put her stuff away.

After all the pain you’ve caused her, it’s the least you can do.

Besides, you kind of owe her a lot. You might barely know her, but she’s giving you a place to stay despite your negative shared history. You can’t help but think that if she had any sense, she’d dismiss you as toxic and kick you out now.

It’s a rather sardonic thing to think.

* * *

Amethyst wakes up at nine. She has an afternoon shift as well, so she can sleep in.

“When’s your shift?” you ask cautiously.

“Starts at one,” she explains. “Ugh, I’ll probably be working overtime again. Some stupid school’s got an excursion. To see the elephants. Apparently they’d rather go all the way to the zoo than Google it.”

You frown. You distinctly remember the funeral a few months ago, at which she stated that she works at a family business. That her family owns. It seems more than a little odd that she’d abandon a job like that.

“I thought you worked for a family business … ?” you ask.

“Yeah, that’s the zoo.”

“...I didn’t know a zoo could be a family business.” How does that even work?

“Eh, I have a big family.”

She fidgets with a necklace that she’s wearing. There’s a large purple gem attached to the string. “Anyway, how old do you think a kid has to be before they can get their belly button pierced?”

You blink several times. “...I have no idea.” Rose was fifteen but she was always a wildcard. “Why do you ask?”

“Eh, my nephew’s being crazy.” She opens the fridge and starts searching for breakfast.

You raise an eyebrow. “Isn’t he around six?”

Amethyst closes the fridge.

When she looks at you, she looks genuinely offended.

“He’ll be eight in August.”

“...Oh.”

Rose has been dead for eight years.

You clear your throat in a futile attempt to divert attention from your lack of involvement in Steven’s life. “That’s still too young to get a belly button piercing.”

She shoots a glare your way, but re-opens the fridge. “I dunno, I think it’d be a pretty cool birthday present. And I could afford it. His dad would kill me though…”

She chuckles. You force yourself to chuckle with her.

“I reckon I’ll order a pizza for breakfast, you want some?”

You turn up your nose at the thought of having pizza for breakfast. You barely consume junk food like that as a snack, let alone in place of the most important meal of the day.

“Won’t that be expensive?” you ask.

“Dude, my mom worked for Diamond. You really think I’m gonna worry about money?”

You force a smile. “...If money’s not an issue, why do you need a roommate?”

“Heh, cause otherwise I’d never clean the goddamn house and it’d be a huge mess. Besides, I get lonely. Anyway, you want pizza?”

“...No thanks, I made breakfast earlier.”

“Ah, when you were cleaning the house at four AM?”

“Three AM, actually.” You glance down the hallway. “I think I might head back to my room now.”

“Okay.” You turn to leave, and she calls after you. “Hey, Pearl?”

“...Yes?”

“Just so you know, you don’t have to like … act like everything’s fine with my mom.”

Your heart skips a beat. “What do you mean?”

“You … you always act like you’re not upset, you know? And like, I get it, you feel like you shouldn’t make it all about you, you were just her secretary and I was her daughter. But I mean, I was only a couple months old when she died. You probably knew way more about her than me.”

Your heart pounds. Your stomach churns. You can almost see the pink hair in front of you. You want nothing more than to have her back. And you have to bite on your lower lip to stop yourself from laughing aloud.

Not at her death. You’re not that heartless. But rather at Amethyst’s guess that you knew more about her mother than she did.

She has no idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three guesses as to what type of gem steven wants to get in his belly button.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know, I deliberately set up this fic so the first chapter(s) would leave the reader with as many questions as possible - who's pearl's ex? who are amethyst's sisters? what happened to them? why did peark break up with her ex?
> 
> i can promise you that many of those questions will be answered. but there are two questions in this fic that will never be answered:
> 
> 1\. why is there a bloodstain on Pearl's ceiling?
> 
> 2\. what the fuck is up with Amethyst's zoo/family business? how can a zoo be a family business? what does amethyst even do there? she's not qualified to do anything actually working with the animals, she'd be a terrible cleaner, her hours are too inconsistent for the gift shop, she doesn't know enough about animals to be a tour guide, and she's probably not a guard/watchman because she mentioned that she'd half to work overtime because of a school excursion.

It’s hard not to feel a little guilty about your lack of participation in Steven’s life.

Rose did want you to break up on friendly terms, after all. You avoided each other for the two years after the breakup -- the last two years she would be alive, not that either of you knew it -- just to avoid having to remember what happened between you, but she did say, in her final days when you finally got over yourself and started talking to her again, that she wanted you and Steven to be close.

You babysat a few times for him while he was younger, since Lapis and Jasper were always busy with each other and Amethyst was only ten when Rose died, but by the time he was around four Amethyst was old enough to look after him for short lengths of time. As Amethyst grew, the amount of time she could be trusted with Steven grew, and by the time he was six you were completely unnecessary.

You frown.

You should have seen Steven recently. Very recently, in fact. You saw a steady stream of Facebook posts for years that said he was very fond of his aunts, or rather his aunt and her girlfriend. You should have seen him a few months ago.

“...Amethyst?” you ask cautiously one day, at breakfast, as she shoves a chicken drumstick into her mouth.

“Yeah?” she answers with her mouth full, spraying crumbs across the table.

“...Why wasn’t Steven at the funeral?”

She puts her food down and her face falls. “For our sisters?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Well… We kinda lied to him about it. Like … we knew we couldn’t get away with just saying they were on vacation, but … he was way too young to know what actually happened, so we said they were murdered. By a stranger.”

You think the fact that his favourite aunt being murdered by a stranger would be preferable to the true story says a lot about how horrible it was.

“And if we took him to the funeral, someone was bound to accidentally tell him the truth,” continues Amethyst. “Besides, he was kinda young for something that sad anyway.”

“Hmm.”

“You got work today?”

You nod. “I’ll have to leave in a few minutes.”

“Want a lift?”

You shake your head. “It’s only a short walk away from here.”

“Yeah, same with the zoo, but I ain’t gonna walk unless the car’s broken or something. When’s your shift end?”

“Five or six, today. It’s a bit … inconsistent.”

“Cool, I’ve got four to eleven at the zoo so I’ll be gone by the time you get home.”

You raise an eyebrow. What does she even do at the zoo? What could she possibly do there that she can do without any sort of degree in the field of animal care, any experience working with animals, that would have her working such inconsistent shifts? She could be a cleaner, you suppose… but cleaners work early and consistently, don’t they?

Besides, if the state of the house before you cleaned it is any indication, she would be a terrible cleaner.

You push the manner out of your mind and glance up at the clock. You finish the toast you were eating. “I’d better go to work now.”

“Cool, I’ll see ya later.”

You nod in acknowledgement of her comment but say nothing as you stand up and walk outside. You’ve got a long day ahead of you.

* * *

When you first got the job, at age 15, twenty years ago, it was so much more consistent.

Fifteen is far too young to be an assistant, but, well, you had friends that put in a good word for you, you were incredibly organised, and Diamond Corporation was never known for their good ethical practices -- that much is clear from the fact that Amethyst is still wealthy from money she inherited from her mother being a higher-up some seventeen years ago, while you’ve been working there for twenty years and barely make above minimum wage.

If it was literally anything else, you would have left the company long ago. You would have decided that the way the company treats its more vulnerable employees was too despicable for you to associate with them, or you would have realised that the minimal pay and lack of structure wasn’t worth it. Even working at McDonald’s or KFC would probably be preferable to your current job, as much as you hate those disgusting fast food restaurants.

But, as it stands, you’re too close to your coworkers to leave them in that hellhole, and it has some good memories attached to it.

You’re all assistants to the higher-ups, the four main powers of the company. Well, you used to be. You helped your employer fake her death, and then the company didn’t know what to do with you.

The hours are inconsistent, but they’re certainly not flexible -- you come in when asked or you risk being fired. Most of the time you’re just cleaning, sometimes helping your coworkers, sometimes doing other random errands.

It’s all very tedious, and since you’re a fast cleaner and most of your time is allocated to cleaning, you have a lot of spare time.

You’re standing around holding a broom, trying to look like you’re just taking a rest for the moment and you’re about to start sweeping again any second now. As the door swings open, you instinctively start sweeping again even though there’s clearly nothing to sweep, but you relax once you see who it is.

Azura Rita Williams and Saffron Margaret Smith, your oldest friends, coworkers, and the ones who originally managed to get you the job. Azura is dark-skinned, with pale blue bobbed hair and some notable blue streaks on her ears -- gosh, can’t anyone dye their hair properly? -- while Saffron has blonde hair that sticks up in an almost impossible fashion.

“What are you two doing now?” you ask.

“Transcribing,” answers Saffron irritably, walking over to one of the computers and turning it on, while Azura takes the one next to her. “The company’s being sued for exploitation again, forcing minors to work too many hours.”

“I’m surprised we haven’t been fully investigated yet,” you admit. “I was getting up at four AM for the job when I was fifteen, that can’t be legal.”

“...I’m sure one day it will be shut down…” mumbles Azura hopefully. There’s a reason you haven’t just dragged your friends out and handed in your two weeks notice on behalf of all three of you by now. You’re mostly free to leave whenever you wish, since Pink isn’t working for the company anymore, but Blue and Yellow go out of their way to keep their assistants working for them. The amount of blackmailing that goes on in Diamond Corporation is astonishing.

Just as she says that, the door flings open again, and you go back to pretending to sweep the nonexistent rubbish off the floor. The girl that walks in is the girl that could, if she wanted to, shut down the company just by telling her story.

Bianca Pink Margolis, another one of your oldest friends. You, along with Azura and Saffron, were close to her in elementary school and middle school. She’s unusually skinny, wearing a black dress, with black hair tied into two identical twin buns on either side of her head.

She used to be so much fun. She used to dye her hair pink and play around when she was at work. She used to work for Pink, but the two were too playful and impulsive together, and were quickly caught for goofing around on company time and not doing work. Bianca became the assisstant to the head of the company instead, and it was her “promotion” that opened up the vacancy that allowed you to start working in the first place.

But something changed after she stopped working for pink. She stopped dyeing her hair and lost all of her playfulness, and became professional to a fault. She stopped sitting with you, Azura and Saffron at lunchtimes halfway through your freshman year.

She’s half blind. There’s a notable scar across her eye. You don’t know what happened.

It’s hard not to be worried about her.

Without so much as a “Hi”, she bustles through the room, eager to complete whatever task she’s been assigned at the moment. Once she closes the door behind you, you cease your feigned sweeping and the three of you breathe a sigh of both relief and worry.

“I hope she’s okay,” mumbles Azura.

So do you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case the names/description didn't make it obvious enough, Saffron, Azura, and Bianca are Yellow Pearl, Blue Pearl, and White Pearl/Pink Pearl (idk what the generally accepted fandom term is for her?) respectively. (for those who don't know, saffron is a yellow flower, azura comes from azure which is a shade of blue, and bianca is just the italian word for white)
> 
> Also, Rita and Margaret (Azura/Blue and Saffron/Yellow's middle names) both mean pearl! Yes, I did deliberately introduce them with their full names to show off, because I literally spent ages researching to find those names. Also, Margolis (Bianca/White/Pink's surname) also means Pearl, it's kind of obscure as a name but it's the only surname I could find meaning Pearl that isn't just the word Pearl.
> 
> I ... may have kinda decided on the full names for every character in this AU (except Jasper who will appear later on, I can't think of what her middle name should be). Most of them will show up at some point later on, but the ones that I might not be able to find a space for later on are Rose Diane Quartz (whose real name is Pink Rosa Quartz), Amethyst Violet Quartz, and Garnet Estelle Corundum! (for those who don't get it, diane sounds kinda like diamond, and corundum is a specific type of gem. haven't heard of it? that's because it goes by different names depending on colour - red corundum is called ruby and other colours are called sapphire. also garnet's voice actor is estelle for those who dont know)
> 
> (also for those who dont know, Saffron and Azura's job when they say "transcribing" is to watch a video of the court trial and transcribe what everyone is saying. my brother works as a transcriptionist for mostly police interviews.)


	4. Chapter 4

Living with Amethyst isn’t that much different to how living with your ex was, honestly.

You were roommates with your last partner for a full year before you started dating, and the fact that you’re still in Beach City means that the distance you have to travel to get anywhere is essentially the same. You get used to your new life with Amethyst, and August arrives sooner than you expect.

After Amethyst rather rudely gives you a “pinch and a punch for the first day of the month” -- do people still do that outside of elementary school? -- you fidget discreetly with a pink gem in your pocket. “Isn’t this month meant to be Steven’s birthday?”

“Uh, yeah, the fifteenth.” The microwave beeps and she pours a glass full of hot milk into her hot chocolate. “But, uh, we haven’t figured out what we’re doing yet. And mine’s on the fifth so we’ve gotta work that out first.”

“...Your birthday’s in five days and you don’t know what you’re doing to celebrate it?” you ask with a raised eyebrow. “And why are you drinking hot chocolate? It’s lunchtime.”

“Hey, I don’t tell you how to live your life.”

You’re not surprised that Amethyst does well with last-minute plans. It’s a trait that seems to run in the family.

“So … are you getting that piercing for Steven?”

She chuckles and then does a lousy job at wiping up the hot chocolate that consequently spills out of her mouth. “Nah, Greg wouldn’t let me. Gotta wait ‘till he’s older. I got ‘im a necklace, though. Here, lemme show you.”

She leaves her drink on the table and gets up. She goes to her room and comes back a second later holding a small cardboard box. She opens it to reveal … a really ugly necklace, if you’re honest. It’s a simple chain with a gem on it, and the gem is a cloudy brown one, unevenly cut.

You tell Amethyst precisely none of this. You don’t exactly want to be the one to tell her she has no sense of aesthetic design when buying gifts.

“What type of gem is it?” you ask.

“It’s a smoky quartz,” she answers. She rubs the back of her neck nervously. “You know, uh … one of the last things Rose gave me was a smoky quartz gem. Before she died. So, uh … I’m kind of repaying the debt to Steven here.”

“Hmm,” you mumble, swallowing back a comment about how Rose gave you something similar.

It was one of those reflective gems that appears to be rainbow in the light, like opals. It wasn’t an opal, though, just a rainbow quartz. You haven’t had the heart to remove the gem from its space in a box at the bottom of your backpack since Steven was born.

“What do you want for your birthday?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you making minimum wage?”

“Slightly above, actually.”

“...Yeah, I’ve seen how that shithole treats the secretaries, you deserve one heck of a pay rise. Just get me a card or something.”

“...If you insist.”

* * *

As the green hand-shaped spaceship crashes, the magical alien that is actually two lesbians continues to beat the shit out of Jasper, and you’re very confused when you wake up.

The dream is like sand; you can feel it slipping through your fingers as you wake up and it’s virtually impossible to remember. There was … you, and Amethyst. On a spaceship that was shaped like a hand? Oh, and Steven was there. And … Lapis’s roommate, who was taller than normal and had robot fingers? What is your subconscious doing?

Oh, and Garnet’s moms were there. Except they were aliens. You think they were all aliens, yourself included, except Steven for some reason. Garnet’s moms had red and blue skin and they hugged each other and fused into Garnet.

How does that even work?

You think Jasper was orange and red in colour. Like the gem. You suppose that was your subconscious trying to do something with her vitiligo. And … Garnet, who in this dream was actually her moms fused into a single entity, somehow, was fighting Jasper. While singing.

If you remember correctly, the song she was singing was a version of that Undertale fan song. You’re not sure how you know that. You’re not sure how you even know what Undertale is.

Sleepily, you retrieve your phone from your nightstand and turn it on. It’s three in the morning. You should probably try to get back to sleep now, since your alarm is going off in two hours and you have to be at work by half past seven. You bring the thin blanket over your head and try to go back to sleep.

Strangely, as you drift back off, the memories of your dream grow clearer -- possibly because you’re in a similar state to what you were in when you had the dream in the first place. It’s still rather confusing and nonsensical, but there’s a clear timeline of what happened now -- the spaceship that was shaped like a hand crashed on the beach, you were all knocked out by some magical thing Jasper had, and you woke up on a spaceship to find that Steven was getting you out of magical forcefield and Garnet was beating the shit out of Jasper while singing an Undertale fan song.

...Some things make more sense before you know all of the context.

You scoff slightly as you remember the finer details. In your half-asleep state, the play on words you come up with seems genuinely funny. You’ll probably cringe at your excuse for a joke once you’re properly awake, if you even remember it then, but at the moment, it seems incredibly clever and you’re proud of yourself for thinking of it.

Maybe in this parallel world, when Jasper dragged Lapis to your house, Garnet was split in half. And maybe her separate halves re-fused in order to defeat her.

In some alternate universe, Garnet re-fused to defeat Jasper. But in the real world, Garnet just refused.

And in a way, Garnet’s reluctance to hurt her was more damaging than any physical blow could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amethyst's canon cut/facet is Facet-5 Cut-8XM. her birthday is August 5th, aka 5/8. unless you're American. but Americans are invalid and their measuring systems suck.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mentions of eating disorders (not EDs that have body dysmorphia but still could be triggering)

On the second day of August, you wake up at five. You get to work by seven-thirty. You spend a few hours helping Azura with a transcription she has to do. She’s a slow typer and she has approximately the auditory processing skills of a large fish, so you end up doing most of the work.

“Thanks,” she mumbles shyly, after you hit submit.

“No problem,” you answer. “Do you know what Saffron’s doing?”

“I think she’s with Yellow,” she mutters. It’s a constant strain on your ears being friends with Azura. She rarely raises her voice above a whisper. “Making coffees or something.”

“Don’t you have to go back to your station soon?”

“Probably. Not until I’m summoned, though.” She hesitates. “When do you get off today?”

“Supposedly at three-thirty.” You don’t exactly trust Diamond Corporation to let you go at the time they’re supposed to, or to adequately pay you for the overtime.

“Saffron and I are meant to be leaving then too,” she explains. “We were thinking of going to a cafe afterwards so I could show her a painting I’m working on, do you want to come?”

“Of course,” you answer, getting out a broom so you can pretend to sweep. You’re technically not supposed to sweep until you’re told to do so, but it’s relatively easy to make up a story about someone who told you to sweep and nobody will fact-check. Besides, you’re not allowed to stand around doing nothing either.

Azura does some online commissions for her art, to supplement the minimal income from her work. You should probably try something similar, honestly, but what would you do? You can play piano, you suppose, but you can’t afford a keyboard right now and you can’t exactly carry the grand piano from your ex’s house out.

That was the thing you were most upset about leaving. You never played it because it was constantly out of tune and nobody knew how to tune it except Greg. You still miss it.

It’s a bit of a dilemma, honestly. You need a keyboard to busk. You need to busk to make money. You need money for a keyboard. You suppose you’re just destined to eternal poverty.

Besides, you’re not in any severe financial crisis -- you could certainly do with a bit more money, but you’re able to make ends meet, at least. Amethyst could probably lend a hand if things got difficult. For now, you can at least afford to get yourself something at the cafe.

And pick up a birthday card.

* * *

You might be poor, but you feel a little guilty about only getting a card for Amethyst, so you grab a box of chocolates as well on your way to the cafe. The card is a simple purple thing, with a picture of a puma and a generic “Happy Birthday” message on the inside. The chocolates are the cheapest you could find, and you’ll try to find some sort of wrapping paper you can use to make it seem a little more fancy.

You’re not sure where you’ll put them. The weather’s still warm and they’re likely to melt, but you can’t put them in the fridge or she’ll just eat them, or at least ask about them, and the surprise will be ruined.

“What kept you?” asks Saffron irritably as you take a seat beside her and Azura. The three of you were supposed to get off work some two hours before you actually did, and they’re understandably annoyed at your lateness.

“My roommate’s turning … nineteen, I think, in a few days. I had to get her some chocolate and a card.”

“How are you going to hide the chocolate?” asks Azura. “Won’t she check the fridge?”

“...I’m not sure.”

“Well, when is it?”

“The fifth.”

“I can deliver it early in the morning,” volunteers Saffron. “I’ll keep it in my house.”

“Thanks,” you mumble, pulling the box out of your bag and handing it to her. She puts it in her own bag and hands you a menu.

“I’m not really hungry,” you mumble.

“Pearl,” Saffron says stubbornly. “You need to eat.”

“So do you,” you retort. All three of you are almost too skinny to be human.

“And I _am_ eating.”

You don’t want to worry your friends, but you’re genuinely not hungry right now. Still, it’s close to dinner time and Amethyst is working late again, so you probably won’t be able to have dinner with her. You might as well have something now. You look at the menu. “Fine, I’ll have a salad.”

Saffron rolls her eyes and sighs emphatically.

She and Azura are mostly just thin and frail by nature, though their constant poverty probably doesn’t help. They eat enough. And so do you, kind of.

It’s not exactly your fault. Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder; it’s best described as mental allergies. You get physically sick from trying to expand your incredibly limited diet. It’s easier to just work around it at this point.

A waitress comes and takes your orders, and Azura starts to get the painting out of her bag. It’s a wonderful painting, honestly. Excellent use of colours. Great dynamic lighting. Very realistic and yet surreal and stylised at the same time. Extremely detailed.

You sigh. “Is your life really so boring that you have to use mine as inspiration?”

She blushes. “Sorry … It was a nice gem, is all. It gave me an idea.”

The monster she drew, like the gem it’s clearly based on, is an ugly thing. Most of its body is an eye strain-inducing shade of bright turquoise, with some darker green stripes. It has four eyes, four legs, and a giant mop of unruly white hair.

“It’s nice, though,” you mumble.

It is nice. And less invasive and weird for her to be using as inspiration than the last painting she did for you. That one was also beautiful, with the great shades of blue and the lovely space background, but her depicting Steven as being trapped in some sort of magical bubble was a little weird.

It still wasn’t as weird as a blue-skinned Lapis with messy hair and blank eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow two chapters in one day! how could this happen?
> 
> (spoiler: it's because I suddenly have an idea for another story and I'm incapable of writing two stories at once and if I don't end up finishing this one/getting to 50k words then I at least want to have all the major mysteries solved)
> 
> tw for alcohol

It’s the fifth of August today.

Unfortunately, however, you have a morning shift and Amethyst isn’t the sort of person who wakes up early on her birthday. You feel a little guilty for missing out on the better part of her nineteenth birthday, but it’s not like you can do anything about it -- for crying out loud, your sister died and you had to spend an hour on the phone negotiating to get three days off, they won’t care if it’s your roommate’s birthday.

You leave her card on the table, along with a note explaining that you had to leave for work. You neglect to mention the chocolates, hoping to keep them as a surprise. She’ll probably stay up late celebrating anyway, so it’ll all even out.

Saffron will give you the chocolates straight after work and you’ll go home quickly. By the time you’re home, everyone Amethyst invited will already be there -- you expect to see Steven, some cousins, maybe a few friends.

You think it’ll all be okay.

God, you’re naive.

* * *

You get home at around four, earlier than normal, and Amethyst is gladdened when you place the box of chocolate on the table. She barely has time to thank you before she starts scarfing it down, giving a couple to Steven.

Steven’s basically the same kid he was two years ago. He even has the same salmon pink t-shirt with the star on it, and the iconic jeans and sandals. Greg’s there, too, presumably to supervise him. There’s Peridot in a corner, ranting about Undertale -- that’s how you knew the song from your dream was an Undertale fansong -- and a few strangers that share Amethyst’s dark skin and unruly blonde hair, presumably cousins or some other relative.

You freeze.

Garnet is here.

This is a bit of a problem, because Garnet is the reason you moved here in June and you haven’t spoken to her in two months.

What can you say? “Oh, hi Garnet, sorry about all that stuff where I manipulated you for months and then spent another two weeks freeloading in your house.” “Hey Garnet, wanna pretend everything’s fine after I hurt you?” “Oh, by the way Garnet, I had a dream about you beating the shit out of Jasper the other night, you were two lesbians and singing an Undertale fan song.”

Yeah, not going to happen.

So, you take advantage of the fact that this is a party. You drink.

Perhaps too much.

The hours blur past, and soon it’s late in the evening and Steven is going home as well as Greg. And your drunken mind can only think of the fact that you’re living a lie.

Of the fact that Amethyst only had one sister, her mother didn’t die young, and Steven isn’t her nephew.

Loose lips sink ships. And you can’t swim.

But you’re going down with the ship anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

  
It was easy to make assumptions based on her salary, but she was never respected in the workplace.

Nobody knew why. Was it her playful and unprofessional demeanor? Her dyed hair? Her young age? Her dark skin? Her earlier teen pregnancy? The reason wasn’t clear, but it was clear that none of the higher-ups liked her.

That’s why she was paid a fraction of what Blue, Yellow, and White got. That’s why her assistant was “promoted” as soon as they stepped out of line. That’s why she was used to the sneers and rude comments that the others gave her.

And that’s why she was pacing around her office so anxiously when she found out.

“I’m going to get fired,” she groaned, continuing to pace.

“...I don’t think they’re allowed to fire you over that…” you mumbled helpfully.

“They’ll find another reason! And after I stop working here, they’ll make my life a living hell. You know they will.”

You gulped. “Maybe you could … hide it from them?”

“For ten months?!”

“More like eight now… You did it with Jasper.”

She ran a hand through her messy hair. It was short and curly, and the natural blonde roots were peeking out through the pastel pink dye. “I was only fifteen when I had Jasper. I wasn’t even working here yet. How am I supposed to hide it from them now?”

You shrugged your shoulders. It was rude, you knew it was rude, but you couldn’t exactly be expected to help with her unwanted pregnancy issues. You were rather pre-occupied with your family issues. With your sister’s recent attempt.

She almost died. It was all you could think about.

And then your eyes lit up.

“...Pink,” you mumbled uncertainly. “I have an idea but it might be too crazy to work.”

She looked down at you with a grin. “I’m listening.”

“You can fake your own death.”

She raised an eyebrow. “How am I meant to pull that off?”

“...We can find a way to make something that looks like your dead body,” you muttered. “And we could take photos so nobody can look closer to see it’s not real! If you just deferred some paperwork and changed your legal name…”

“...That would never work,” she insisted. She paused. “Unless…”

“Jasper’s in foster care, right?”

“I mean, I still visit her sometimes, but yes.”

“So if she turned out to actually have an older sister that looks just like you…”

“Then that sister could raise …” She paused. “She could raise Amethyst after I’m ‘dead’!”

You devolved into giggles together. The plan went off without a hitch.

* * *

You always loved her, honestly. You have a feeling she always loved you back. But it was a few months before your nineteenth birthday that you made it official.

It was perfect. It was so perfect.

Your parents sneered at you. They weren’t too concerned about your lesbianism, luckily, but they didn’t exactly like the fact that your girlfriend was old enough to be your mother.

You said that she wasn’t that much older. That there was no way she could possibly be your mother.

But the fact that Jasper was the same age as you really didn’t help your case.

You cut off contact with your parents, like the stubborn little girl that you were. It’s not like you would ever need their support. You were going to live with Rose for the rest of your life.

My God, you were naive.

* * *

You were okay with the polyamoury, in much the same way that your parents were okay with the lesbianism.

They remained convinced, up until the very end, that you were just bi with a preference, or a straight girl wanting to experiment. They accepted you being gay as long as they were allowed to tell themselves that you would eventually dump Rose in favour of a man.

And you, similarly, accepted her being polyamourous as long as you were allowed to tell yourself that she would eventually settle down with you.

In your defence, the others she dated weren’t that different to you. She was up-front about the fact that she wanted to have short-term encounters with others and a long-term commitment with you alone, but that didn’t stop them from overstaying their welcome and trying to talk her into dumping you for them, or at least staying with both of you long-term.

Until Greg Universe came along.

His real name was Greg DeMayo, but he had gotten it legally changed for his music persona. He was a singer-songwriter. He played concerts in Beach City. Rose was usually the only person who attended them.

He was the same as any other man -- she started with a discussion with him, about how she didn’t want a long-term relationship with him, and they were both okay with that. But when he overstayed his welcome and freeloaded at your house for entirely too long, she didn’t tell him to leave.

They exchanged phone numbers. They called near-constantly when they weren’t together. He became a permanent fixture of the house. Amethyst, who was almost eight by this point, took a liking to him.

One day, she asked you to go for a walk so she could talk to him. Privately.

You didn’t walk. You just stood on the beach with your stomach churning and tried not to hyperventilate.

She texted you asking you to come back in after about an hour. She sat you down and explained to you that she wanted to have a long-term relationship with Greg.

She told you that nothing had to change. She told you that she still wanted to be committed to you. She told you that she could love both of you.

But you were too busy yelling at her to listen.

Because she said none of the others mattered! She said that she was committed to you and only you. She said you were the most important.

You stormed out. You moved in with your sister. You ignored her calls for the next week, but finally responded when she requested that you remain friends with her despite the breakup.

You were so desperate for her love that you said yes.

She didn’t care for you any more, though. You had said too many awful things in your anger over Greg. The atmosphere in her house was intolerable. You avoided her for two years.

When she told you about the pregnancy, you avoided her even more. Maybe if you knew that Steven would kill her, you would have cherished her more.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for manipulation and death

This isn’t your bedroom.

You just woke up, you have a splitting headache, everything smells like vomit, and this isn’t your room.

What happened last night?

You were drunk, you remember that much, though it’s not exactly difficult to infer based on your headache and lack of memories. You were drunk off your ass. You were as drunk as Jasper was when she …

Holy fuck, this is Garnet’s house.

You shoot up in bed, staring around at the room. This is definitely Garnet’s house.

What the fuck?

You look around desperately, praying for some sort of explanation. There’s a piece of paper on the bedside table, along with two tablets and a glass of water. Painkillers, presumably. Your ex is surprisingly considerate.

You take the tablets and wait a few minutes for your head to stop spinning, then pick up the note. The writing is suspiciously square-shaped.

_You were really drunk last night._

Yes, you know that!

_Like, drunker than Jasper when she beat me up._

Get on with it!!!

_You told everyone about how Pink was actually Rose._

...Fuck.

_Amethyst is angry with you so I took you here._

...You’re fucked.

_I don’t have work today, so come downstairs whenever you’d like to talk._

...Fuck, she wants to talk to you.

* * *

You moved in with your sister after you had that fight with Rose. She wasn’t all that difficult to live with. She kept to herself, she was polite, and with your prompting she took her goddamn medication and drove her stupid ass down to the therapist.

The problem was that your sister’s name was Lapis Lazuli Waters, and she had terrible taste.

She moved out in favour of living with Peridot, the gamer girl. You were left struggling to maintain the rent with your minimum wage job. You cut as many corners as you could, but you couldn’t afford to skip any more meals, not with your already low weight and limited diet. You struggled to grab your stuff before you could get evicted.

You’d met Garnet briefly through Rose some years prior, and you happened to know where she lived.

She couldn’t exactly say no, not when she was the only thing between you and homelessness. Especially since you promised to contribute to the rent.

Garnet seemed like the living embodiment of cool and composed when you met her. She was a little quiet and rather tactless, but she was the most confident person you’ve ever met. She was prepared for any situation.

It wasn’t until you started living with her that you realised she was perhaps a little too prepared for any situation, and that maybe having neatly typed and printed plans for any scenario from an awkward encounter with an old friend to a natural disaster wasn’t exactly healthy.

She said it was both a blessing and a curse, being able to know what could happen.

She said it was future vision.

You said it was a severe anxiety disorder.

You kept an eye on her, because you lived with Lapis for your teenage years and you saw how badly untreated anxiety could affect someone. But she seemed to be okay, at least. Perhaps a little overprepared, but okay.

You were each other’s support. You bandaged her wounds and iced her bruises after her confrontation with Jasper. She held you and ran a hand through your hair after you got the news about Lapis. You started dating a few months ago.

And it was the worst decision she could have made.

* * *

It was difficult, seeing Peridot.

She was tactless, she had no ability to understand that your sister just died and you didn’t want to hear about her goddamn Pokemon game. More importantly, you only knew her through Lapis, and she represented a painful memory.

But you both lived in Beach City, so you saw her around.

She tried calling, one day. You let it go to voicemail. It was only a few weeks after the incident and Lapis’s death was fresh in your mind.

You just cried.

And Garnet held you as you cried. She took care of you. She forced you to eat enough. When you were still generally depressed, she tried to cheer you up with a gift. An expensive one, too, and you felt guilty for caring about the price tag but it meant she cared.

She gave you a gem. A gem called sardonyx.

And it was so, so addicting.

* * *

It escalated.

The sardonyx kept coming, and it was a symbol of her love. You wanted that love. You wanted it so badly.

One day, you caught a glimpse of the teardrop-shaped necklace, the one she left you in her will. You missed her. So much. You felt like you were going to cry. And you realised, as tears formed in your eyes, that this was a good thing.

Because Garnet would comfort you.

It escalated.

You started deliberately sending yourself into a downward spiral for her love. Then you stopped sending yourself into a spiral and just exaggerated how upset you really were. Before you knew it you were outright making up stories.

You came home crying, on that fateful day in June, saying that Peridot had said something insensitive. Garnet was angry on your behalf, and called Peridot to tell her off.

Peridot remembered no such incident, and Garnet confronted you.

You told her everything.

You told her that you had been manipulating her for months. That half of the times she comforted you, you weren’t even upset. That half of the things that upset you never happened in the first place.

She was understandably a bit upset about this.

She told you to go to your room, like you were five years old, because honestly, that’s the age you were acting. You sat on your bed for an hour while she punched things and sobbed loudly.

She knocked on your door after around an hour. She told you what you already expected to hear: She was breaking up with you.

“You’re paying most of the rent,” you said. The question was implied.

“You can stay here until you find someone else. But this is my room. You get the guest room.”

You grabbed your stuff and moved to the guest room with your tail between your legs. You tried not to cry. You had no right to cry, you weren’t the one that had been hurt. But the guilt was its own type of punishment.

Garnet was anxious. So, so anxious. She couldn’t rely on anything. She lived her life on the assumption that things would go wrong at every opportunity. She was reluctant to make long-term plans because she couldn’t rely on anything long-term; she wouldn’t organise a house party a week in the future because there was no way to guarantee that she wouldn’t be evicted by then.

There were four things she could rely on. Four people, actually. Amethyst, and her moms, and …

She never predicted that you would betray her.

And you did.

* * *

You decide that Garnet is perfectly capable of coming upstairs to check on you and that if she really wants to talk to you, she should have said that more explicitly in the note.

You check your phone obsessively, praying for a text from Amethyst saying she’s not angry anymore and you can go home. Because if you don’t get one soon, you’ll have to discuss your living arrangement with Garnet, at least organise to get your stuff. And you would rather die than do that.

But Amethyst drank a lot as well, and she’s probably just as hungover as you, not to mention angry that you kept important details of her family a secret for nineteen years. The text isn’t coming.

When your phone rings, you hope it’s her, but it’s an unknown number. It’s probably a telemarketer. Or, worse, one of those numbers that calls you and hangs up without saying anything, then charges a ridiculous fee for every second you spend on the phone with them after you call them back. Still, you might as well humour them.

Maybe they’re somehow right and you really do want to change your electricity bill over.

“Hello?” you ask, holding the phone to your ear and trying to sound professional despite your still-present headache and hangover.

“Pearl.”

“...Garnet?” Isn’t she just downstairs? Why is she calling?

“Pearl,” she pants. She sounds more scared than you’ve ever heard her. She sounds like she’s … in pain? “Come downstairs. Quickly.”

You don’t hesitate. You don’t even hang up, just dump your phone on the bed and throw the door open.

This all feels a little too familiar.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! three chapters in one day! pretty impressive amirite? (spoiler: im not right because 1. i have two exams tomorrow and i wrote most of chapter 8 and this chapter in math class when i was meant to be studying and 2. im literally just trying to get over the main mysteries that were established in chapter 1 so i can move on and get this fic over with so chapter 10 will probably be the last chapter even though it will end with basically no actual plot resolution, no info on what pearls living situation will be, and none of the pearlidot i wanted to include)
> 
> tws: alcohol, violence (not described in detail but still there), blood, injury, broken bones, author outright confessing to her plans to end with no actual resolution

When you get downstairs, the first thing that comes out of your mouth is, “Why did you call me and not an ambulance?!”

It’s several seconds of confused, panicked flailing before you finally come up with the second question: “What happened?!”

She gives no response.

You look around the room, desperate for some sort of answer. She’s lying on the kitchen floor, her sunglasses on the ground a few inches away from her, blood dripping down her face. There’s glass everywhere.

There’s an open cupboard just above her and it looks like several of the glasses in it are missing. Or broken. On the floor.

You’re not wearing shoes.

You bend over to try and reach Garnet without stepping forward and cutting your feet on the glass, holding out a hand for her. She takes your hand and you can feel how badly she’s shaking. You pull her to her feet. She’s wearing shoes -- pink Converse, specifically -- so it’s a little safer for her to walk across to you.

“What happened?” you ask again.

“Knocked the cupboard and stuff fell,” she breathes.

You wipe the blood away from her face and find the source. You cringe. There’s a large piece of glass embedded in her forehead, just above the left eye. “I think we need to call an ambulance.”

“Can’t afford it.”

Fuck, you hate America sometimes, and it’s not as though you can really reassure her when you’re even more broke than she is. “We’ll work something out. Amethyst can help. That’s a bad cut…”

But in the back of your mind, you already know that she won’t let you call an ambulance, and you won’t let her walk.

Garnet has a car.

She might be concussed, you’re not letting her drive.

You don’t have a license.

...Then again, that didn’t matter the last time you had to drive Garnet to hospital.

* * *

You knew your sister was coming over. You predicted that there was a high chance she would bring her girlfriend. But nobody warned you that Jasper would be drunk off her ass.

She was standing in your front yard, holding an empty vodka bottle and generally looking threatening. Lapis was holding her arm, trying to make sure nothing went wrong. And you were trying to make conversation.

“So … how’s your sister doing?” you asked nervously.

That was apparently enough to set her off.

“My sister,” she roared, pulling away from Lapis’s grip. “is a puny, overcooked runt!”

“...Overcooked?” you said with a raised eyebrow.

“Shut up, you … lost, defective Pearl!” She angrily turned toward the ocean. “And what’s this shameless display?!”

Garnet paused her swimming laps. “There’s no shameless display here.”

“You’re wearing a swimsuit!” screamed Jasper. “Why are you wearing a swimsuit?!”

“Because I’m swimming.” said Garnet, getting out of the ocean.

“SWIMMING IS JUST A CHEAP TACTIC TO MAKE WEAK ATHLETES STRONGER!” roared Jasper dramatically. “And your moms are gay!”

“...Yes, that’s the point.”

“Jas,” said Lapis playfully. “you’re really drunk.”

But Jasper was having none of it. She aimed a punch at Garnet and missed horribly, falling into the sand. She got back up and started again. “Fuck you, Garnet. Your moms are … they’re perfect… Lapis hates me!”

“No I don’t.” said Lapis. You weren’t entirely convinced.

“I’m not going to fight you, Jasper.” said Garnet. But Jasper was going to fight her.

She smashed her empty bottle over Garnet’s head. Lapis tried to pull her back and got pushed to the ground. You got out your phone to call emergency services and she tore it out of your hand and stomped on it.

Garnet tried to get by with just dodging and blocking, understandably reluctant to use her full strength against someone so obviously too drunk to think straight, but for crying out loud, she was bleeding from the broken glass and probably concussed.

Your phone was broken. Jasper and Garnet were busy fighting.

“Lapis!” you hissed. “Do something! Call the police!”

“And get Jas in trouble? No way.”

When a particularly hard blow caused Garnet to fall backwards against the wall of her house, Lapis finally rolled her eyes at your panicked glare and grabbed her girlfriend’s arm. “That’s enough, Jasper, you’re too drunk. Come with me.”

She dragged the brute away and you rushed to Garnet’s side. “Are you okay?”

“...I’m fine.” she grunted, struggling to her feet. You helped her inside. You sat her down and disinfected her wounds and iced her bruises. She insisted she was fine.

You almost believed her, honestly. Garnet’s an excellent liar, and usually the only way you can spot her in a lie is if outside forces end up disproving what she says. Her false confidence made it hard to doubt what she said.

But there was something unusual in the look in her eyes, her stare seeming unusually unfocused, that made you concerned considering that she had just taken a blow to the head. And while she could insist that you were just being overcautious about the concussion, it was a bit difficult for her to deny that she had landed on her left arm when she fell into the house and she was flinching in pain every time you touched her wrist.

She did try to deny it, though.

“It’s not broken,” she insisted. “It’s just sprained.”

“Garnet, you can’t move it.”

“I can move it.”

“Go on, then, move it.”

Her wrist remained motionless.

“It’s not that bad,” she continued, trying from a different angle. “It barely even hurts.”

You raised an eyebrow. You were tempted to just grab her wrist and start squeezing it to show her just how bad she was at denying it. You settled for a gentle brush, one that couldn’t possibly hurt her unless it was bad, and she noticeably flinched.

You weren’t letting her drive with a broken wrist and possible concussion, so despite your notable lack of license, you took control of her car. You drove her to the hospital despite her protests and tried to reassure her that you would guilt Lapis into guilting Jasper into paying for her medical bills.

Neither of them would be around long enough to be guilted into paying anything, not that you had any way of knowing it at the time.

It was late in the evening, but you didn’t have a phone and Garnet would need picked up at some point, so you stayed in the hospital and waited for her to be treated. You were there for the better part of the night. Neither of you were home at night when the police officer knocked on your door.

Neither of you witnessed what happened after Jasper was dragged away.

But I did.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A commenter named FriendlyPoltergeist once mistyped a comment in a way that made it look like this fic is from Lapis's POV .
> 
> They have no idea how right they were.
> 
> Tw for suicide, murder, drowning, mentions of self-harm, and unhealthy relationship

You were more than a little annoyed at my apathy during Jasper’s fight with Garnet. You didn’t get it.

You didn’t understand that once Jasper’s set on a path, there’s no convincing her otherwise. And there’s no convincing me otherwise, either.

I can’t really blame you for that. You didn’t see it. You didn’t see the fighting, the screaming that lasted well into the night. You didn’t see the cutting and the drinking.

And you didn’t see what happened after I dragged Jasper away from Garnet.

She was basically too drunk to be functional. She was larger than me and stronger than me, but she couldn’t fight back when I pulled her. I could do whatever I wanted and she wouldn’t be able to stop me. She wouldn’t be able to remember it and punish me in the morning. 

I would probably never get another chance like this.

I dragged her down to the beach. Like you, she couldn’t swim to save her life, so we couldn’t really go more than knee-deep into the water. Barely that deep, since I was scared she could fall.

I braided her hair. She splashed me. The salt water ruined my blue dye after a while. 

At some point I saw the maroon car driving past. I saw a glimpse of you in the window, but I dismissed it. I knew you didn’t have a license.

I didn’t know at the time that Garnet had a broken wrist and a concussion. I didn’t know at the time that nobody would be home. 

If I had, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time walking far away from the house.

You weren’t home late that night when the police came knocking at your door.

But they came knocking again the next day. You found out eventually.

...I’m sorry, Pearl.

* * *

Swimming, according to Jasper, was just a cheap tactic to make weak athletes stronger. But she was drunk and her reasoning was faulty.

“Teach me,” she slurred, staring out at the ocean.

“Hmm?” I asked.

“Teach me to swim.”

I refused at first -- she was drunk and had no experience and this was the ocean and something was bound to go wrong -- but she was insistent.

So I took her hand and walked into the water with her. 

She’s tall. It got over my head before it went over hers, so she could still be on solid ground as I taught her the basic technique. And I dragged her just a little bit deeper.

I could see the moment when she realised. She grabbed onto me and started thrashing desperately. She weighed more than me, and there was no way I could keep us both afloat.

That was okay. I had written a will already.

I always knew that this would be the end. And what better way to go down than to take her with me?

“I’m done being everyone’s prisoner,” I said darkly, watching the fear in her eyes as she kicked desperately. “Now you’re my prisoner! And I’m never letting you go!”

“Lapis…” she begged with a final gasp of air, and then exhaustion caught up to her and she fell under the water.

She was still grabbing my leg. It was a challenge to keep my head out of the water with her weight pulling me down.

That was okay. It wasn’t like I was planning on staying.

“Let’s leave this miserable planet…” I panted from the effort, and with my final exhale, I screamed, “Together!”

The water consumed me, and she was still conscious enough to pull me harder now that I was under, preventing me from getting back up. She had caught onto the idea. If either of us was going down, we were taking the other with us.

The water swallowed us both that day, and you were left with nothing but the ugly green and white gem I left you in my will. The malachite.

It was early the next morning that you found out. You stood there, stunned with shock, unable to think beyond disbelief and confusion.

“Yikes.” said Garnet. “They were really bad for each other.”

* * *

Garnet is getting stitches. 

Amethyst just texted you asking you to come get your stuff. The implication is clear. If you’re lucky, she’s just assumed you’re too ashamed to face her and you’re moving out. If you’re unlucky, well … you did hide some very important details fo her family for her entire life. You can’t blame her if you’re not welcome in her home.

Unlike the time with Jasper, you have a phone, so Garnet can text you when she needs picked up. Still, you leave her car in the parking lot and walk to the mall. You don’t know if she’s actually in any state to drive, but it seems wrong to take her car after everything that happened.

Besides, you still don’t have a license.

You gather up every last penny you have, and you have no idea how you’re going to eat for the next month after this. You buy a sardonyx.

You write an apology letter and leave it in Garnet’s bedroom. You walk past Amethyst’s house and find that your stuff is on the doorstep. Not that you have much in the first place.

You grab it, and you struggle to stuff everything into your backpack and suitcase. You check in the windows to see that she’s not in the living room -- she’s probably at work or sleeping in -- and then crouch outside the house to use the wifi. It feels a little like stealing, but it’s not like you can afford to top up your data.

You check the old Facebook post you made in June, asking if anyone in Beach City is looking for a roommate. It got two responses. One of them you just ignored because it was just too weird, but … it’s still an option. Two months on, it’s still an option.

You knock on her door. She’s short, and blonde, and she has glasses. Her fashion sense is atrocious. She’s wearing a green t-shirt with a yellow star on it, a dark green skirt, and green tights. You really feel like she could benefit from trying some different outfits.

She was your dead sister’s roommate.

You still think you can make something work.

“...Pearl?” she asks, staring up at you in confusion. “You got really drunk at the party.”

“...I got kicked out.” You have a feeling she knows how. “Is your offer still open?”

“...” Once again, if she doesn’t step up, you’ll be homeless. You feel a little bad for putting her on the spot like this, but she did say she needs a roommate. “Sure. I’ll show you inside.”

You thought you could never patch things up with Peridot, but here it is.

You miss Garnet. And Amethyst. You think maybe you can smooth things over with them. Not right now, and you can’t move back in with either, but … maybe you can give them an apology that they’ll accept. Erase the damage you’ve done with your lies.

You’re sure you’ve pretty much burnt those bridges.

And you can’t swim.

But that’s okay.

You’ll build a boat.


End file.
